music and culture from the sahel and sahara

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For sometime I’d been on an elusive search for the West African metal musicians. It appeared that metal didn’t exist the Sahel. Enter Shine. Band leader Daouda Dao is professor at the Arts Conservatory of Bamako. It’s Bamako’s art school, with active theater courses, plastic arts, visual arts, and music – an impressive attendance of students making all kinds of amazing media. Anyone looking for a place to meet/collaborate/launch art projects in Mali needs to know about this place. But I digress. When I meet Daouda finishing up one his courses, he tells me that he’s in a metal band, and I immediately drop everything to set up a rehearsal.

Shine’s music is unlike anything else in Mali. For one, there is a Keytar in the band. Also, Daoudo plays the guitar with his teeth and Van Halen inspired two handed guitar tapping. It sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard in Mali, or even in West Africa. The range of influences are vast – blues rock, Hendrix, and the aforementioned “metal.” Perhaps it’s the driving rhythm guitar and the deadpan vocals, but I almost hear some Joy Division.

Mali is an overwhelming Muslim country, around 90% to the 1% of Christians. Churches are sparse throughout the capital city and much less visible than their brethren with towering mosques and their synchronized calls to prayer. Suffice to say, there is no problem here between religions, and Mali is a place that prides itself on pluralism. Shine is made up from these churches – each band member in their respective church band – and their music contains a religious message. Perhaps because of this status as religious/musical minority the band is less bound to the more popular sound in Mali, and can experiment in the fringes. Into Metal.

We record the session at a church in Sabalibougou, a suburb of Bamako. The wide space and arching metal roof distorts the sound into a reverb oblivion – not an ideal venue. It would sound better with a full church, but it’s empty for now. After five songs or so, everyone quickly departs for their other bands, choirs, and jobs. I’m not sure what I heard, but I want more.

Digging at the mp3 market in Bamako, I had the vendor send me over a folder entitled GAO RAP. Containing, of course, what the title says – Rap music from the Northern Mali city of Gao. Which in itself would not be so remarkable if it wasn’t for what rap music from Gao sounds like. Which is nothing else in the world.

Rap in foreign languages leaves much to the imagination, and the unfamiliar ear gravitates towards the production over the lyrical content. There is a heavy use of autotune, and a certain reverbed synth that carries the melody. All of the productions tend to have little flourishes, the light hand of fruity loops. It’s low-fi in a way that is already a thing of the past, a signature of the early 2000s, PC based music.

Gao lies in what is essentially the extreme North East of Mali. You can go no further without leaving the asphalt behind. At a crossroads (both culturally and literally), Gao accumulates a little from every side. Musical influence is equally part high energy Balani Bamako Hip Hop and the sweet and cheesy autotune of Hausa pop music, combined with fascinating rhythms of that homegrown sort, with sudden changes that reflect the intermittent improvised breakdowns at the heart of takamba.

As a genre, GAO RAP may end here – at the title of an mp3 or the folder of a music collector at Bamako’s music market. It’s not something considered, certainly not abroad, but neither in Mali. It’s hardly a genre, or even a subculture – and it may not exist for long enough for such bold words. But it is a localized experimentation and a sound inseparable from a place and time. It exists, and it sounds like Gao.

Caught this on the radio late night in Sikasso. This is more or less a live in studio example of the “balani show” remix, performed on a sampler, with CDJs. I don’t have anymore info, but it’s brilliant.

Missirikoro is a small village south of Sikasso. It’s only 12 kilometers away, but the road is all red dirt and rocks – unpaved, but heavily traveled. As you approach the village, you can see the strange mountain rising above the tree line. It is a small cylinderical formation that seems to have been dropped out of the sky. There are some young men standing in the forest when we approach, and they accompany us up the hill. Inside the mountain are a series of caves. The biggest chamber is about twenty meters tall. Various indentations mark the floor – the place where the ancient ones prayed, carved out spaces for giant knees and feet, or the crescent shaped divot where a woman and child once lay. The cave walls are curving, and the light from the opening high above flows down them in a river of shadow. It smells of incense and the cave ceiling is waxy and black from smoke. Hidden in the small annexes and corners, people are praying.

This is an ancient place with ancient magic. The place is special with Djinn. There are various caves for Muslims, Christians, and animists, all who come here to make sacrifices. You come here to pray and you make a promise to the cave. If it grants you this, you must come back and fulfill the promise. I hear dozens of stories of those who negated their end of the bargain, and payed in various ways. It’s said many years ago, anything you felt the need to eat would be waiting for you when you arrived. But it was ruined when a man didn’t believe the cave. He thought it was some sort of trick, so hid and watched to see where the food came from. A young girl djinn came carrying the food, and when he spotted her he cried out. He tried to leave but turning into the cave, he became hopelessly lost, and is somewhere still, perhaps, in secret passages underneath.

I go back into the main cavern to have a moment, alone. There are three people in the various chambers with me – a man lying on a prayer rug with a koran, a woman in white hidden on a ledge over the animist cave, and another man, dishelved and unkempt. It is not all silent. Birds flutter and make strange cries, bats swoop through the darkness. Strange insects with long antennaes crawl on the floor. The ground is cold. The air is cold. The earth is still. It reminds me of the cathedral in Tarragona, the curves and symmetry, the private chapels, the underground crypts, the divine valuting. This is a cathedral. Or the cathedral is a cave. Is it so unlike the places where the first people worshipped? The cathedral always carries with it a narrative of power of man to build the structure in the name of god. But this chamber is something different. It is built by god and djinn. It may be alive itself.

The lack of written history is cited as a tragedy, and we work to find and preserve elements of tradition that may be lost to history. But absence is also power. Historical explanations of the caves of Missirikoro might tell us when the first people came here, how they worshipped, why they came to see the caves this way. They could say which stories are ancient, which were altered over generations, and which are modern innovations, sprung from imaginations, boredom, and speculation. But we have nothing like a library here, only words. With nothing to look to, with no explanations of when or how a story began, we are left with only the stories themselves. And all the stories are equally true. We are left with only the sacred.

Spent a few days in the South of Mali in Sikasso — a region stunningly different from the North. This is green Mali, with rice paddies, giant tropical trees, and red earth. Water is everywhere. People like to joke that everything is free in Sikasso. It’s one of the only regions that is truly self sustainable and can grow its own food. It’s also home to a myriad of deep tradition and history.

I’ve come here to research the Balafon, only scratching the surface, for a future trip next year. I soon find myself at the home of Soumana “Vieux Balani” Diarra, who plays in the orchestre of local griot Isa Keita. We visit his house in the late afternoon, clearing a space of traditional medicines, tiny packets of powders wrapped and bound in leaves. In addition to the Balafon, Vieux makes various charms that he sells by the roadside. He also makes a mean millet beer.

We record a short session, accompanied by Amidou Koita on the Ngoni. A musician stops in to sing for a bit, and soon the door is crowded from neighbors who have gathered to watch as well. The audience is global too – we take a small video and post it to Instagram and Facebook while they are playing (longer video here). At the end of the session, we gather around the cellphone and check out the likes and comments, and think about the future – while internet is slow, it suggests some interesting possibilities for live streaming performance. Boiler Room Sikasso? Stay tuned.